


Blueberries

by kenwantsabird



Category: RWBY
Genre: Anger, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Blacking Out, Blake x Weiss, Blueberries, CheckMate - Freeform, Coco x Velvet, Crimes & Criminals, Crushes, Cult, Cult AU, Dancing and Singing, Dark, Death, Developing Relationship, Drama, Dreams and Nightmares, Drugs, Enemies, Enemies to Lovers, Escape, F/F, Falling In Love, Family, Feelings, Feels, Female Characters, Female Relationships, Fight Scenes, Food, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gore, Happy Ending, Harm to Children, Horror, Hurt, Illness, Injury, Intoxication, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Themes, Loss, Love, Manipulation, Mental Health Issues, Modern AU, Mordern, Plot, Poison, RWBY - Freeform, RWBY Alternate Universe, RWBY au, Religion, Rescue Mission, Resuce, Romance, Royalty, Ruby x Penny, Sad, Secrets, Suicide, Supernatural Elements, Teenagers, Torture, Tragedy, Trauma, Violence, anger issues, but not in a kinky way u perv, farm, farm au, farming, mental health, modern day AU, poison food, well like happy-sad ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:54:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25276489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenwantsabird/pseuds/kenwantsabird
Summary: Blake Belladonna was never very interested in visiting the blueberry farm both of her parents grew up in and constantly praised, but after being expelled from her school for attacking another student, they’re quick to send her packing and out the door, her future set at an ancient farm in the middle of nowhere until further notice.It’s not until she arrives at the farm does she begin to realize things there are nowhere close to the boring (but normal) experience that she expected. The farm has hundreds of workers, all under the age of twenty, and all with the same misty, drunken looks in their eyes. They speak only praise for their line of work, and for the Owner, who is never seen around, and whom Blake is told not to disturb.There’s one worker who seems different the others, the winner of a festival beauty competition they have annually, hailed the ‘Blueberry Princess.’ Her name is Weiss Schnee, and she seems to have it out for Blake in particular.Things start to get weird. And then they get deadly.Turns out the blueberry farm is more than it seems.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Weiss Schnee, Coco Adel/Velvet Scarlatina, Penny Polendina/Ruby Rose
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	1. A Glance at the Deeply Unhappy Teenage Experience (or, Why I was Sent to the Farm)

_Slam!_

It started in the middle of fourth period. The bare white walls of the large biology classroom felt, as they always did, like the walls of the prison. Eight ‘lab tables,’ which were just counters with sinks in the middle, sat in the back of the room. I think maybe some happy, giggly teacher that actually enjoyed their job might have put them to use once, but our current ‘professor’ (he makes us call him that, I don’t know who he thinks he’s fooling) has yet to do anything more interactive than a shitty PowerPoint presentation. Twenty eight desks sat at the front of the class in four rows of seven, facing the north wall. I was the third row, six desks back, as far away from the front as I could manage. Cardin Winchester sat first row, seven down, with a couple of his buddies that I never bothered to know the names of. They were laughing at something, paying no attention as the teacher droned on to the uninterested classroom. I’m pretty sure nobody was paying attention, I definitely wasn’t. 

_Slam!_

I don’t actually have that much of a problem with Cardin. He was a cool jock, so he was never exactly my crowd, but I’d always made it my goal to try to ignore high school stereotypes, refusing to dismiss him as stupid or cruel. I’d only ever spoken to him once or twice, asking for a pencil or for help with a math question (I’d heard he’s good at math, and judging by how he helped, he’s probably better than me.) There was the time during our sixth grade formal that we were both dancing close to each other and he grabbed my ass, but all the sixth grade boys did stupid things to harass the girls, so I can’t really use that incident to judge his character. What I do judge him by, however, is the day I walked into him scream crying in his car while I was trying to skip class. General rumors had floated around saying that him and some boy he’d been dating (Sky Lamb? Lark? I don’t remember) had broken up. 

I’ve seen a lot of breakups in my day. I’ve never seen anybody gets as torn up as Cardin did. 

He’s... unhappy.

_Slam!_

Cardin’s group grew louder as time went on. I’d opted out on today’s ‘intro to cellular function’ lecture in favor of one of my favorite books. They say that as you get older the school classes you take will get harder, but cellular function and biology have been taught in our program since we were ten. Ever heard the phrase ‘the mitochondria is the power house of the cell.’ Cellular function. That’s it. I don’t care to bug other people in my class, and I’ve never been the source of trouble for others, but I was trying to escape the jail-like classroom in return for Dr. Jekyll’s manor, and Cardin was growing ever more disruptive, not just of the professor, but of my train of thought. 

They were just getting so loud, it was pissing me off.

_Slam!_

Within minutes of my initial notice of the group, I could hear what they were saying.

”Yo, but what are you going to do about Velvet?” Voice number one. Did not belong to Cardin.

If they could be quiet, I could concentrate on my book.

”What the fuck am I supposed to do? Madame Coco got sent off with her, she’s the only bitch with a big enough mouth to fight Velvet’s folks.” Voice number two. Also not Cardin.

”So what, you’re going to pussy out?” Voice number three. Still not him.

”What other choice to I have?” Voice number two.

Perhaps the choice to shut up.

”Go and find out where they sent her,” Cardin’s voice, “then get up and rescue her.”

_Slam!_

”You say that like it’s so easy, I don’t even know where she is.” Voice number two.

”So find out.” Cardin.

“Yeah, how do I find out? I’m sure her family is just dying to tell me where they shipped her off to” Voice two, again.

I try to focus on my book, and tune them out. It’s ‘The Man With Two Souls,’ the story of person possessed by two separate spirits, fighting for the rights to control the body they share. It ends with the kinder spirit, who refused to destroy the other, being crushed, it’s kindness used against it. 

”I heard it’s the same place Ruby’s folks put her and he bimbo sister in,” Cardin’s voice.

_Ruby. Yang._

_Slam!  
_

It’s been a long time since I saw the sisters. They disappeared after Yang got caught attending an event that served mostly gang members. I never knew why Ruby left with her, but when they left, nobody heard from them again. Their dad refuses to speak about them.

“So what, you know something about where Ruby and Yang went?” Voice two.

Yang, I can remember her so clearly. Golden hair and violet eyes, she used to cut the ends of the skirts that our school required us to wear in uniform, make them shorter and shorter until the staff took notice. When she talked to me, she spoke with a fun type of passion, like everything was made to entertain her. 

”I have an idea of where.” Cardin’s voice. What does he mean he has an idea?

Yang was the first person I was ever friends with. We met in the second grade, partnered up for some project by our teacher. I think she was partnered with me on purpose, I was a shy kid, so they probably thought Yang would bring me out of my shell. 

I used to spend every weekend at her house, all the way into freshman year, before she left. We’d share the bed in her room, and kick Ruby out early into the night so we could be alone. I was fourteen when she kissed me in the middle of the night.

I was fifteen when I kissed her back.

”I might have the address.”

_Slam!_

”What do you _mean_ you might have the address?!” 

I didn’t mean to yell. And I didn’t mean to stand up.

The class all stared at me, including Professor. Cardin’s face was expressionless, all stony and statue-like as he looked me up and down. Then he gave a half smile, and turned back to his friends.

”Miss Belladonna, I don’t know what has gotten into you, but please sit down,” Professor spoke in a cold tone.

”Yes sir, I’m sorry,” I took my seat, and gradually, the rest of the class looked away as Professor started up the lesson once again. 

That should have been the end of it. It really should have.

_Slam!_

I learned later on that his name was Russel Thrush, the boy who’d I’d thought of as voice number one. He’s some type of punk, with a light green Mohawk and a battle vest and ripped jeans. His mother loves him a lot, which he despises, because he wants to be able to say that he hates his parents without feeling guilty about it. He’s kind of an asshole, and just like everybody else, he’s unhappy.

_Slam!_

“Dyke Belladonna needs to get over her girlfriend.” Voice number one.

_Slam!_

I’m not usually a very violent person.

_Slam!_

But I don’t take shit either, especially from people like Russel Thrush.

_Slam!_

And I was already angry at Cardin’s group. For being too loud. For talking about Yang and Ruby like they were irrelevant factors of their plan. For talking about Yang and Ruby at all.

_Slam!_

So I hope that, if there’s a god, he can forgive me.

_Slam!_

For what I did to Russel Thrush’s face.

_Slam!_

“Miss Belladonna!” I feel myself being wrenched backwards by several sets of hands. My shirt is torn, there’s blood on my hands, and I look down on the floor to see desks knocked over, groups of people standing around the body of Russel. He’s bleeding, mostly from wounds on his upper body. I can tell by the feeling in my hand that I broke several nails scratching at him. There’s a sore spots above my right eyebrow and below my ribs where he got a hit in. 

I am calm, and I let a group of three girls drag me out and into the hallway.

—

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had problems with my anger.

I lashed out, fought other kids, yelled at people passing by just for looking at me weird. But worst of all, whenever I got really, _really_ angry, I would black out, and my body would move without me. My parents took me to different doctors, hoping some sort of medication could stop it, but in the end the best they could do was have me sent to a therapist for anger management.

It took pleading and begging and crying to get my parents to do what the doctor recommended. They wanted to send me off to this blueberry farm they’d both worked at when they were younger, they said they thought it would be good for me. Apparently it had a summer-camp-like program, and it took in troubled children and teens with the hope that the great outdoors could fix their problems for them. But I didn’t want to leave home, so after weeks of convincing, my father agreed that I’d see a therapist, and that if therapy worked, he wouldn’t make me go away.

I worked long and hard to do what the therapist said. I practiced taking deep breaths whenever I was upset, made efforts to change the tone or subject whenever people talked about things that pissed me off. But most importantly, I practiced keeping track of my anger. How close was I to blacking out?

Before today, I’d gone six years without blacking out.Still, one incident is enough that I’ll be considered proven wrong about therapy. 

My parents will have a field day with this.

—

“You’re going.” 

”Give me another chance, Dad.” 

We’re sitting in our family room on a Sunday afternoon. It’s been four days since I beat up Russel for calling me a dyke. His family decided not to press charges, his father is a politician, and he doesn’t want the press to hear about his son using homophobic language. I’m sitting on a green sofa, facing both of my parents. 

As I predicted, they’re overjoyed to have an excuse to send me to the farm.

”We already gave you a chance, Blake,” my mother chimes in to back him up, “and you failed.”

”After six years of success!”

”Delayed failure is still failure,” my father crosses his arms. I know I’ve already lost, but I want to be able to say I fought.

”There’s a bus that will take you there coming on Tuesday,” my mothers voice is sickly-sweet, and she smiles in this weird fake way.

Mom’s always been... off. Even the nicest neighbors say that she’s kind of hazy. As a kid, I was more scared of her than Dad, because I didn’t think she was a real person. Yang used to theorize that she was actually just a puppet, and my real mom was locked away somewhere, being held captive.

”I’m not going.” 

”Yes you are,” my dad remains firm.

” _Why?”_

”It will help you with... with whatever ever it is that causes you to do these things.”

”Such horrible things,” my mother mumbles, and I can tell that she’s somewhere else entirely.

“It won’t happen again!”

”I can’t trust that Blake!” My father raises his voice for the first time in the conversation, and I know that it’s dangerous for me to protest again. Instead I close my eyes, and count to ten, like my therapist used to tell me.

”Spend tomorrow saying goodbye to your friends, and apologize to that Russel boy, understood?”

”Yes sir.”

He stands up, takes my mother’s hand, and walks out of the room with her.

I sit a minute longer, staring into the palms of my hands, resting on my lap. Day after tomorrow, I’ll be gone.

Day after tomorrow, and then it’s all over.


	2. Melania and Miltia

The bus smelled like gasoline and lavender. When I stepped up the stairs of the door, a brown leather suitcase in each hand, I was briefly overcome by the stifling scents of a floral air freshener, which hung from the front mirror. The driver told me she used an extra powerful one to try to cancel out the stench of the gas. I gave her a half-hearted smile, and quickly made my way to the back of the vehicle, as far away from the source of the stench as I could. 

It was six a.m., and the sun was just beginning to rise. The days since my parents announced I would be shipped off to the farm had passed quickly, and I had refused to speak to either of them. I had stopped attempting to control my anger, and it would only take one breathy word from my mother’s mouth to set me off. In the morning, when the bus arrived to take me away, I walked past them in the kitchen and got on without a goodbye. It served them right, sending me to the farm without my consent, after years of effort on my part. 

Several times, Yang would say that she was always angry about being punished by her father, but knew deep down inside that he was only doing what he thought was best. And I would agree with her, saying I knew that, despite my anger, my parents were trying to look out for me.

As I settled down into the torn gray seat, I didn’t feel it. The small recognition that they were trying to help.

They wanted me at the farm. They always had. Just... not because it would be good for me.

I shook the thought away, half bored with it, and half dismissive. As a kid I learned to shut down certain feelings, especially those of paranoia or mistrust, by naming them ‘angsty teenage bullshit.’ At the time I thought it made me self-aware. I don’t know about that anymore.

In a jolt of smooth motion, the bus began to drive, and I leaned my head against the cold window pane, trying to ignore the occasional bumps as they passed me by. There was nobody else on the bus besides me and the driver, and as such it was eerily quiet. No music played over the speakers, and because of the early hour, very few cars drove past on the street. I was still tired, and I knew that the drive would be several hours long, as the farm was out of state, somewhere in rural Oregon. There would be stops along the way, as well, to pick up all the other girls who’d be joining me.

Not entirely in spite of myself, I drifted off to sleep.

-

_I have this memory of my mother, standing in the dining room of our house. Her hair was matted, her clothes covered in dirt and grime, as though she had not washed herself in days. She was facing away from me, she was always facing away from me. I called out for her, and she did not turn. Instead, she sat down in the floor, muttering the secrets of the universe under her breathe, and I couldn’t explain how, but I knew that, if I forced her to turn and look at me, she would die. So I just walked away. Leaving her there, as she sat, her real self, before ghosts I could not see, speaking with a force unknown to my mind._

-

When I woke up, there were three new girls on the bus. One, with dark black hair and a red dress, sat in the row across from me, next to another girl in white who looked to be her sister. Towards the front, a girl with short, green hair sat. I couldn’t see any of her besides the back of her head. Lifting my head from the window, I blinked sleep away, taking a moment to adjust to the brightness of day, now newly arrived and quite forceful in making itself known.

”She’s aliiive,” the girl in white said, drawing out the ‘i.’ “Miltia thought you might be dead.”

”I was just joking,” the girl in red -Miltia, I suppose- replied, not bothering to turn her head to look at me. 

”Pardon?“ I asked, the hazy buzz of having just woken up still clouding my mind.

”You’ve been asleep for, like, three hours. And that’s not counting before we got here, which was at, like, seven.”

”Oh.” I paused, “And who are you?”

The girl in white looked at me, her eyes halfway hooded, “I’m Melania, and my sister is Miltia.” Miltia continued to look out the window, not acknowledging me.

”Are you guys also-“

”Headed to blueberry hell? Yeah, we are,” Melania shifted so that she was turned towards me, “Miltia got us sent on our way after she got in a screaming match with Daddy. He says we have to learn to behave ‘calmly and properly,’” she made little air quotations, “‘we’re ladies after all.’ What bullshit,” she looked me up and down, “why are you here?”

I hesitated, then answered truthfully, “I beat up a kid at school.”

She raised an appraising eyebrow, “Damn. What did he do to you?”

”Talked about somebody I knew in a bad way.”

She frowned, clearly looking for a more specific answer, but she didn’t press, “Anyways, Miltia is still bitter from her tantrum the other day, so I’ve had no good company. And that girl up front won’t even tell me her name. She’s all mysterious and shit. It’s been really boring.”

”Oh, uh, sorry?” I wasn’t sure how to respond.

”You know, for somebody who beat up a kid you seem kind of skittish.”

”Fuck off.” 

”That’s better, you should assert yourself.” She smiled prettily, and despite my slight irritation towards her, I couldn’t help but feel that she’d be good company on the farm. She seemed to float with an air of confidence, the type of girl who you’d admire in school because the world didn’t seem to phase her. In a way, it reminded me of Yang.

”So, uh, why are you going to the farm?”

”I already told you.”

”You told me why your sister is going, but not you.”

”Oh,” she shrugged, “we’re, like, twins, so out parents always make us do things together. Honestly it’s really tiring, because whenever she gets punished I get punished too. My family doesn’t know how to separate us.” 

”That sucks.”

”Yeah, it does.”

The bus hit a bump in the road. “How long is this trip again?”

”A few more hours,” Melania answered, “we have a few more stops to go. A lot of girls across the state get sent here, and they’re all, like, super spread out or whatever.” 

”Damn.”

”Yeah. You know, I hear they make you wear uniforms. I hope they’re cute, or the place will just be even more hellish.”

”I don’t think a farm is going to care about being aesthetically pleasing.” 

She crosses her arms, pouting, “Yeah, probably not. Maybe I can find a way to make mine cute though. Miltia is going to be a fashion designer, I bet she could help me, if she ever gets out of her _mood._ ”

”I’m not in a mood,” Miltia protested, though she still didn’t deign to look at me.

”Yes you are,” Melania rebutted, “anyways, she’ll get out of her funk later, and then she’ll be all friendly again. Ignore her on this bus ride though, she gets rude when she’s moody.” I wondered how Melania could say all of this in front of her sister like it was nothing, and I wondered more at how Miltia didn’t deny or protest what she was saying, just kept her gaze fixed out her window. 

For the rest of the ride, Melania talked to me about her old school, the boys she had dated, the girls she had dated, and all the triumphs she’d had on the cheerleading team. She seemed a bit petty, and a slight bit shallow, but I didn’t mind, and honestly I wasn’t going to be one to judge. More girls arrived on the bus over time. One girl was tall with pastel pink hair, another set of girls arrived in a group, whispering to each other frantically. The final girl, however, was a tan, freckled girl with a dark brown ponytail, who sat at the very front of the bus in the seat behind the driver. She was pretty, _incredibly pretty,_ and I felt my heart beat a bit faster at the sight of her. She caught my eye for a moment, and winked, though she didn’t introduce herself. I nearly blushed.

When the bus finally steered to a stop, Melania had just finished telling me about some girl she’d gotten in a fight with at her job. The bus, which had been full of the soft, jumbled noise of groups of girls whispering to one another, went quiet. Next to me, Melania sighed, “Welcome to Hell.”


End file.
